At Great Bend High School, on October 19, all of the WAC Marching Bands held a marching festival to showcase the hard work that the band students put in during the fall season and to give the bands feedback so they can make improvements for their other festivals.

“The WAC marching festival is a lot of hard work, and takes a lot of people to put together, but it is well worth it when it all comes together.” said band director, Grant Mathews.

The bands that participated in the WAC festival was the Panther Pride Band, Marching Indians from Hays Highschool, “That” Liberal Band, Garden City Marching Stampede, and The Pride of Southwest Kansas from Dodge City.

“For future band members, this is a serious event and one of our contests” drum major Natalie Williams said “but never ever forget to have fun. Take it seriously, keep your eyes on the drum majors, step off with your left foot, and put in effort. It is so, so worth it.”

Each of the bands had different show themes. For instance, our theme was Musical Royalty, Hays’ theme was Jersey Boys, Liberal’s theme was Despues, Garden City’s theme was Dia de los Muertos, and Dodge city’s’ theme was Just Beyond.

Williams said her favorite thing about this WAC was to watch other bands preform and having her parents there to watch the panthers preform. The other drum major, Dustin Emig’s, favorite thing was watching all the other band preform.

“My favorite thing about the festival was being able to watch all of the other bands.” Emig said, “The feeling is euphoric when bands are able to come out and wow you even more than the previous band.”

The judges for this event were Jim McAllister for music, Ben Rohrer for visual, Dean Kranzler for percussion, Steve Lueth for effect/overall, and Dennis Kerr for color guard. Our Panther Pride band scored a 2 in music, a 2 in visual, a 2 in percussion, and a 1 in color guard. Which led to their overall rating to be a 2.

Mathews  said “Our students worked hard putting their shows together, and performing. I’m very proud of them!”

All the marching bands for WAC held a festival to showcase the hard work the band students put in during the fall season and  give the bands feedback to make improvements for their other festivals at Great Bend High School.